Seventy-three years ago today, American, British, Canadian, French, and Polish soldiers charged the gates of Hell — and won:
Black Five put up an excellent roundup of D-Day posts from many blogs a few years ago. It’s still worth reviewing. And have a look at this entry for a photo essay on D-Day.

Another video for Memorial Day. In this case, it’s not America’s Forgotten War, but the war America would like to forget: the Vietnam War. Historian Victor Davis Hanson explains why we fought there and how we lost:

Over the past several years, the reading of recent revisionist histories of the war have convinced me that, for all the domestic turmoil we experienced, we threw away a won war in 1974-75 and that, as I’ve long suspected, following a strategy similar to what we pursued in the second part of the Korean War might well have preserved South Vietnam as an independent state. As Dr. Hanson mentions, our failure to do so had terrible repercussions in Vietnam and in Cambodia.

A parallel with Iraq also inevitably comes to mind: as did Nixon in Vietnam, the Obama administration inherited a divisive war, but a war that was being won. All that was needed was to show endurance and political will to secure the peace. And, again -though not for the same reasons- we failed to do either.

Both conflicts show the need for the United States to come up with a coherent political strategy to secure the victory after we’ve won on the battlefield. We’re great at the latter, but, since Korea, we’ve been terrible at the former.

And Memorial Day is a good day to remind ourselves of the need to fix that, so that the sacrifices of the honored dead aren’t wasted.

It’s Independence Day here in the US, in which we celebrate our break with the British Empire. We’re 240 years old and, despite what some sanctimoniousLefty scoldsmight think, I think we’re doing pretty darned good. We’re not without our problems or faults, for instance two major parties that manage to find the two worst people possible to nominate for president, but I continue to believe America is exceptional among the nations of the world and that we are indeed a force for good. If you’re looking for some good Independence Day reading, there’s always the Declaration of Independence itself. Think of it as a short ideological summation of who and why we are.

Then there’s the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which function as a citizen’s “owner’s manual.” And yes, to those of you in other countries raising an eyebrow about now, we do tend to place those documents on a pedestal. You have to admit, however, they’ve worked well for over two centuries. How many republics and constitutions has France had in that time?

Gosh, it’s become quiet….

A lot’s been written around the Web about today, so I’ll spare you my musings. Instead, I want to leave you with something that I think symbolizes the best of the “Spirit of 1776:” a reenlistment ceremony held in 2008 in Baghdad in Saddam Hussein’s former palace, Al Faw. Over 1,200 enlisted personnel volunteeredfor another tour of duty, sworn in by General Petraeus himself:

Eat that, Michael Moore. Oh, and Congressman Murtha? What was that about our military being broken?

The Founders’ notion of the rule of law, coupled with freedom of the individual, explains why the United States runs on merit, not tribal affinities or birth. Most elsewhere, being a first cousin of a government official, or having a prestigious name, ensures special treatment from the state. Yet in America, nepotism is never assured. End that notion of American merit and replace it with racial tribalism, cronyism or aristocratic privilege, and America itself would vanish as we know it.

There is no rational reason why a small republican experiment in 1776 grew to dominate global culture and society — except that America is the only nation, past or present, that put trust in the individual rather than in the state and its elite bureaucracy. Such confidence in the average free citizen made America absolutely exceptional — something we should remember more than ever on this Fourth of July.

Those notions are being put to a test these days as progressives try ever harder to divide us on tribal lines and turn free citizens into wards of the State while the two parties nominate exemplars of “cronyism and aristocratic privilege,” but I still believe they’re true.

Note: This is a republication of a post I wrote in 2008, edited to repair broken links or replace text no longer available on the web.

Click the link or the photo, then go to the bottom of the article to watch the video. I’d swear they are practicing attack runs on a giant map, all while Dear Leader III looks on, happy as a pudgy murderous dictator can be. Mel Brooks would steal this for one of his movies.

North Korea: Where surrealism found its home.

Afterthought: On a more serious note, I’m reminded of something George C. Scott says toward the end of “Patton.” I’m paraphrasing, but General Patton (Scott) says he knew the Germans were beaten when he realized they were using wagons and horses for their retreat. In other words, they were running out of fuel and thus the ability to sustain modern combat operations.

Makes one wonder how long North Korea could keeps its planes flying if the Korean War turned hot again.

Seventy-two years ago today, American, British, Canadian, French, and Polish soldiers charged the gates of Hell — and won:
Black Five put up an excellent roundup of D-Day posts from many blogs a few years ago. It’s still worth reviewing. And have a look at this entry for a photo essay on D-Day.

RELATED: The Daily Mail tells the story of one Medal of Honor winner who still wonders how he survived Normandy.

Whenever Israel gets into a fight with its Arab neighbors, cries go up from those Arabs of unspeakable, innumerable Israeli atrocities. A left-leaning, anti-Israel press all too credulously accepts these reports, which are echoed uncritically by transnational NGOs and even the UN, which has its own anti-Israel bias. Thus the image the world sees is of a monstrous Israel Defense Force, one that is heedless of the civilian casualties it may cause.

The truth, as one might expect, is far different and begins with the fact that the Palestinians lie regularly and often. Here to correct the record is British Army Colonel (ret.) Richard Kemp in a video from Prager University:

It’s a point that has to be made over and over, as it does on behalf of our own military, often accused of crimes it never commits. (1) The Left and their allies in the jihadist movement will never, ever stop telling lies about either the Israeli or the American military, and so we must never stop telling the truth.

Footnote:
(1) No, I’m not saying either nation’s military is perfect. But both go to extraordinary lengths to avoid or at least minimize harm to civilians. The same cannot be said about our enemies.

Back in the old days, this is what was called a casus belli — a cause for war:

Nearly 200 U.S. troops have been killed and nearly 1,000 injured by Iranian-made explosives in Iraq, according to new disclosures from a partially declassified report conducted by U.S. Central Command and described by sources to the Washington Free Beacon.

The number of U.S. deaths resulting from Iranian terrorism were revealed for the first time on Wednesday by Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) during a hearing focusing on the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute terrorists directly responsible for the deaths of Americans.

At least 196 U.S. service members fighting in Iraq were killed directly as a result of Iranian-made explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, according to Cruz and congressional sources familiar with Centcom’s mostly classified report.

The deaths took place between 2003 and 2011. The Iranian explosive devices wounded another 861 U.S. soldiers, and a total of 1,534 attacks were carried out on U.S. military members over this period, according to sources familiar with the report, which was provided to Cruz’s office.

The devices bore the signs of the Iranian “Quds Force,” their external terrorist/special operations group within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. And, though not mentioned in the article, similar attacks took place in western Afghanistan, in regions near the Iranian border. The Iranian government was killing and maiming our soldiers.

I call that an act of war.

Note that this is a failing of both the Bush II and Obama administrations: Iran (and Syria, for their support of jihadist rebels) was never properly punished for its actions. This is a region of the world wherein strength and brutality is respected: the failure to hurt Iran for its attacks on our forces only invited further aggression.

Think I’m misreading things? A 2007 National Intelligence Estimate noted that Iran has seriously slowed or even halted its nuclear program after we invaded and liberated Iraq. The Iranians were afraid we’d do something similar to them, so they tucked their tails between their legs and laid low. This is not a brave regime. But, once they realized we weren’t going to do much to really punish them, they began and continued their attacks through 2011.

I’m not saying we should declare war on Iran and invade, though the ill-advised restraint of George W. Bush and President Obama’s incompetence have made eventual war more likely, not less. The American public isn’t ready for such an undertaking, and the military needs a lot of rebuilding.

But, at the same time, the Middle East isn’t going away, and our necessary involvement there isn’t over. Potential foes have to know they will pay a high price for attacking us: we must fight back. A response doesn’t even have to be military. In fact, it’s too late now to do anything like direct retaliation.

However, the Iranian regime is afraid to death of its own people, so why not (finally) start giving substantial political support to the opposition? Make the mullahs fear for their own necks, rather than going after ours.

If we don’t show them we’re not bin Laden’s “weak horse,” they’ll only do it again.